by Bill Heavey
He could be, I thought, unbelievably obtuse. I remember the family going to a very fancy restaurant for some occasion, the painfully beautiful blond waitress with big hoop earrings telling us the specials. “As appetizers, the chef has prepared a smoked mozzarella and tomato salad, clams casino, and seviche.”
“Beachhead?” my father asked loudly, his voice audible to everyone in the place. “What’s beachhead?”
“It’s raw fish,” I told him. “They bring it still flopping to the table and kill it in front of you. You might enjoy it.”
I went off to college, which meant that we only got to fight irregularly, but already it was less vehement. He was still in my head, I could hear his voice every time I fell short in anything, but I was no longer under his roof. I got a job working as a reporter for the Saudi Press Agency, attending briefings at the State Department and sending summaries and editorials back to Riyadh, never to know what happened to them. I began seeing my freelance articles in print (and, strangely, it didn’t trouble me that they appeared under the name I share with him). At last it seemed that I was slipping beyond his reach and into my own life. Then bits of him began popping up in me. I was horrified. But there was no denying it. I was my father’s son. Blood, it seemed, was thicker than sarcasm.
I took a personality test, which said I succeeded not because of my enormous God-given talents, but mostly because I refused to give up. I had never been a snappy dresser, and found in adulthood that I could go several years without seeing the inside of a men’s store. (At this point a submerged early memory came up, of watching him putting on an undershirt so full of holes I thought it must have been designed that way and my mother groaning, “Honestly, Bill, I know the Naval Academy issued you wonderful underwear. God knows it has served you well. But I don’t think they meant for you to wear it into retirement.”) Like him, I thought only people with money to burn put it into snazzy automobiles. I found myself buying used subcompacts, changing the oil every three thousand, and deriving a certain pleasure from pushing them until their engines gave up the ghost. I recalled his exhortations to me as a child: Squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom, flatten the tube as you go, screw the cap back on tight.
There is no anti-inflammatory agent like time. Could this be the giant who had once thundered up the stairs to spank me, of whom I was so afraid that I wet my pants? In his place was someone I worried about, whom I dressed in my down hunting jacket with the enormous hood for his annual pilgrimage to Philadelphia for the Army-Navy game. My writing, which he had once ridiculed, saying, “Gee, do you really think there’s any money in it?” now became a source of pride. His face would light up when recounting how people at Rotary had mistaken him for the Bill Heavey who’d written of his adventures kayaking in the Everglades. It was as if now that I no longer needed so desperately to please him, I had succeeded. We had become two old veterans from opposing armies, shaking hands years after the fighting, the combat so distant as to be a dream.
It turns out that before we can install the disposal we have to snake out the pipes. They have been receiving partially chewed-up organic matter for at least four years, which is how long ago I moved in.
Slowly I feed the snake in. It has a handle you turn, sort of like what shopkeepers use to furl up their awnings, that makes it screw its way deeper into the pipes. The damn thing is so long that the unused portion sticks out into the hallway, where my father has to turn it so it doesn’t kink up. Every so often I pull it out, loaded with black pipe gunk that clears your head out marvelously. It’s so Freudian it almost cracks me up, my father and I pulling up all the stuff that went down the drain so many years ago. I don’t mention it to him. He is not versed in psychological theory. All he knows is that when somebody mentions Freud, they are usually trying to make him uncomfortable.
Clearing the ancient muck out takes a long time. We spell each other under the sink, remarking how gross it is. He knows more about this stuff than I do, but it’s not the same as being a plumber. At a certain point we get stuck trying to figure out how a gasket fits. “When all else fails,” he announces, “refer to the directions.” “Gasket sleeve must fits way showed,” say the directions, which seem to have been drawn in charcoal, smudged, and then photocopied.
There are only two ways it can go on, and we opt for the lip facing up. We connect the wires, black to black, white to beige. But I torque down too hard on a wire nut and snap the entwined copper wires. I’m afraid I have ruined the whole project, but he seems almost pleased by this accident because he knows exactly what to do. Pulling wire cutters from the magic tool chest, he strips the insulation in one movement and we’re back in business. We reconnect the wires but finally run out of expertise when it comes to actually fitting the thing up through the drain. We both try every configuration we can think of, but it’s not happening.
“Ah,” he says finally. “We’re going to have to call in a plumber.”
This is not how I remember him. He used to be so stubborn, the kind of guy who could make IRS examiners throw up their hands in frustration and let him off. Now that I have his mind-set and don’t want to give up, it’s as if he’s acquired mine. We’ve somehow circled each other.
“I gotta get home,” he says. “Your mother and I have to be at a dinner party at seven thirty. I’ll get hail Columbia if I’m late.”
I don’t know anybody else who uses this expression, but he’s been saying it all my life.
“Don’t you pay for the plumber. Putting this thing in is part of my Christmas present to you.”
When he finally stands, he lets out a little yelp. His legs are cramping from being in one position so long and he crouches reflexively, grimacing. It’s strange. My reaction is as much annoyance as compassion. He’s seventy-four, for chrissake, he should know that he has to take better care of himself. Is he getting enough potassium? Is he doing his stretching exercises? Maybe it’s because he’s always insisting that he doesn’t feel old and I want it to be true and the fact that it isn’t is now staring me in the face. The Oedipal giant of my childhood is now an old guy in blown-out corduroys with muscle cramps.
I take the heavier of the tools, walk him to his car. We shake hands again and he drives off, one hand rising as he sees me standing there in his rearview mirror. Though we’ve failed to install the disposal, it’s been strangely satisfying, this time among the parts. At last we’re on a kind of even ground. I feel as if we’re two old warriors who somehow got thrown together by circumstances. Maybe he wasn’t the best father. Maybe I wasn’t the best son. But I could have done worse. And now I realize that there will be a day when he dies and leaves me behind. I know that I’m luckier than some of my friends, whose fathers died while they were still locked in the battle that neither really wanted. But I will never be ready to cope with his leaving.
The plumber comes two days later. He lifts the disposal into place and secures it as easily as I buckle my belt. When he turns it on, there is an empty pop and a cloud of smoke bellows up out of the InSinkErator like a miniature volcano. He checks the wiring. We had actually done it correctly, only stuffed it back in such a way that two of the wrong wires touched.
There is no permanent damage, however, and I spend the next twenty minutes joyfully inaugurating it with a meal of stale carrots. I would like my mind to work that well: processing each thing as it comes in, washing it away, and retaining no memory of it whatsoever.
Christmas. My father and I are driving over to my sister’s apartment, carrying a table in the station wagon. We pull into the lot and start to unload. “It’s not so much that it’s heavy, it’s just awkward,” he says. This is one of his axioms, a sentence I have heard ever since I first helped him move anything. Also in this category are “Well, we want to see ya,” used to close out phone conversations, and “It’ll make your hair curly,” said of anything on my plate I didn’t want to eat.
The table is
light. It’s faster for me to carry it and just have him hold the door. He looks a little bewildered now that I’m the strong one. We fuss with the arrangement. He thinks it should be perpendicular to the wall with the leaves extended, as if the table’s usefulness is in direct proportion to its surface area. “Dad, she won’t be able to get around the damn thing like that. Let’s just turn it next to the wall and leave the leaves down. They’re easier to put up than they are to take down.”
We debate this for a couple of minutes, as if it were our solemn duty as men to leave it in the proper configuration for my sister, who could not possibly do it on her own. “Well,” he says on the way back, “that’s taken care of.”
“Yep.”
As so often happens, once the work is done I don’t know exactly how to talk to my father. It’s Christmas night and a fine drizzle is falling. I have the wipers set on delay, and there is almost no one out on the road. Minutes pass.
“I didn’t tell your mother this,” he finally says, “but I was afraid you were going to be cashing in on what little insurance I’ve got on that sail back from Bermuda.”
Sailing is my father’s biggest passion in life. He built a simple rowboat when he was twelve. Last year he and five other guys flew down to the island to ferry a big racing boat back to Newport. The crew ended up being two men in their forties, a seventeen-year-old boy and three guys in their seventies. The weather report was good, but they ran into a storm one day out of port that didn’t let up for four days.
The boat was forty-four feet long, but built for raw speed, with the thinnest possible hull, no pumps aboard, and a 110-foot mast. A man on a boat nearby was swept overboard and lost at sea when a wave washed over at the instant he unclipped his safety line to go below. The same thing happened to one of the men on my father’s boat, but the others managed to grab him by the ankles. The boat’s mainsail blew out like a paper bag when the wind hit 52 knots.
“I really didn’t think we were all going to make it back,” he says. “Boat like that, it’s pretty easy to bury the bow into a wave and broach.”
There is no drama in his voice. On the contrary, he sounds almost sheepish, as if he knows he would have gotten in big trouble with my mother if he had died. His own death has never particularly interested him. But I’m glad he’s told me. I like the feeling that we are the men of the family, that we have our secrets, too. And I vow he’s not going to be allowed to do anything like that again.
Not long ago, I started badgering my parents to get their estate in order. They simply didn’t want to deal with it. To them, it was as if a cabdriver had pulled up and asked if they wanted to go straight to the cemetery or drive around a little first to get used to the idea. I finally wrote them a letter saying that if I were a parent, I would want to make damn sure that the IRS got as little of my money, and my children as much, as possible. I knew this would push my father’s buttons, but felt it was necessary. It worked. They met with a lawyer.
My father and I arrange to have lunch near my office one day so he can fill me in on the details. We end up at a restaurant full of air kisses and men with hair like Prince Valiant. We are the only guys in the place not in suits with shoulder pads.
My father says that during the meeting with the lawyer, they also drew up some funeral plans. “One thing I don’t want you to worry about is what’ll happen to me,” he says, with the satisfied air of a man who has taken care of business. “The navy will cremate me for free.”
“And what about the ashes?” I ask, unconsciously slipping into our male mode, concerned only with practical things. It was if we were talking about how to get rid of the old disposal.
“They scatter them at sea.” He turns away, looking around for our waiter. Something breaks inside me. When he turns back, I am crying, hot tears springing up in my eyes so suddenly I’m almost choking.
“I don’t want you to die,” I finally manage to say. “I don’t want them to scatter your ashes. I’ll scatter your ashes.”
“Oh, Bill,” he says, taken aback, totally at a loss about what to say. “I don’t plan on dying anytime soon. I just didn’t want to burden you with it.”
I have no way to tell him that I want to be burdened with it, that it is my birthright to be burdened with it. “I know,” I say. I don’t even look around to see if anybody is watching us. I don’t care. I reach across the table for his hand and hold it, trying to stop the tears.
II
IT’S ALWAYS NOVEMBER SOMEWHERE,
2000–2004
WORTHY
November 9, 8 a.m. Even twenty-eight feet up, I hear the buck before I see him, a shuffling of leaves no louder than the squirrels, but slower. Then there are eight points and his bulk ghosting down the hillside. The adrenaline gatekeeper decides he’s open for business. Now I see the buck’s swollen neck, the heavy swagger in his gait. Shaking, I clip my release to the bowstring and rise. (Taking the life of a deer is many things, but if you think trivial is among them, it’s time to put down your bow and take up badminton. Come to your feet. Honor the animal whose life you seek.) He’s moving like he knows where he wants to go, not fast but purposeful. On his current course, he’ll stay out of range.
My grunt fails to stop him the first time. The second stops him momentarily before he shrugs and resumes course. The estrous call is the ticket. When he stops, partly shielded by a tree all of twenty feet from mine, I’m at full draw and forcing myself to breathe regularly. Half a step more—even four inches—and I’ll double-lung him. It never happens. In a single movement, he snorts, pivots, and is gone, the heavy body now weightless in flight.
November 15, 10 a.m. Same hillside, different tree. Three does wander into view. They’re grazing, moving in and out of the dappled sunlight of this oak woods. I rise to my feet as they drift closer. Well within range, the biggest turns broadside with her head down, nuzzling acorns beneath the yellow leaves. I draw, squeeze, and watch the arrow hit a full foot right of where I aimed. A paunch shot. She kicks her hind legs straight up and in five seconds has scrambled down the hill, through the creek, up the far hill . . . gone.
Nothing registers at first: neither frustration, sorrow, nor remorse. Slowly, all three do. And remorse packs the longest blade: How do you think that deer feels about your potshot, big boy?
On the ground, I kneel to finger the light belly hair, the green slime of partially digested acorns, and too little blood coating the arrow shaft. Her path yields no sign. At the place where she disappeared over the hill, I drop my fanny pack and begin walking ever larger circles. Soon there is a tablespoon-size splotch of blood on the leaves. Ten yards distant is another, then irregular droplets. I search for two hours, tracing and retracing her path, sometimes crawling on hands and knees to tell if the red drops are blood or leaf mold. The blood is oily and smudges when you roll the leaf between your fingers. Then the droplets stop. The wound has closed up. I search for another hour. Nothing.
On the ride home I distract myself by thinking of aboriginal cultures and how we’ve taken their beliefs and stood them on their heads. Where bringing home meat is a matter of life or death for a whole society, it is taken for granted that the hunter succeeds not so much because of his skill, but because the animal chooses to make a gift of itself. The hunter’s main job is not to kill but to live in such a way that he may be judged worthy of the gift. We don’t believe that anymore. We’re not even sure what it means to have hunting success tied to the hunter’s character rather than an acquired set of skills. But it suddenly comes to me as I fight the hollow feeling in my stomach that what I want above all else is precisely this: to be found worthy.
December 2, 4:30 p.m. A brushy funnel above a creek in a neighboring state. I’ve been sitting up here for three hours, busy not thinking about the deer I wounded. As the red sky begins to fade and the shadows gain heft, a doe wanders down the path. I rise and clip on. She stops in a shootin
g lane as if it had all been agreed to beforehand. The arrow shoots. She jumps, settles, takes nine wobbling steps, falls, kicks once, and lies still.
Holding a flashlight in my teeth, I ratchet my stand down the tree and walk to her. I lay a hand on her flank and stroke her hair. Wisps of steam from her body curl upward in the flashlight beam. I’ve read how native hunters believe that an animal doesn’t die all at once, but slowly, its spirit finding its way out of the body and up to the next world. I stay there another five minutes, stroking her coat, feeling the interlocking elation and regret, the gratitude and sorrow that only hunters know. With every stroke, I discover I’m mouthing, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
AMERICAN SCENE:
ROD AND REEL REPAIR
The record player clicks and another platter drops while he’s writing up your ticket. A moment later Phil Evans’s microscopic shop, crammed between a Latino grocery and an electrical parts store in Arlington, Virginia, fills with the Sons of the Pioneers singing “Cool Water.” The music sounds as if it’s welling up from somewhere deep inside your own memory—a song you forgot you even knew. “Nineteen fifty-nine,” says Phil, his blue eyes lighting up to see that you recognize the tune. “Cowboy music. Outta style, outta print. Can’t buy these records for love or money today.” He grins, lifts a spaghetti colander holding the guts of a spinning reel out of a bucket of solvent, and hangs it from a bent coat hanger hook to drip.
Around here, just like everywhere else in America, the megastores have sucked the life from your neighborhood tackle shop and turned the space into overflow parking. Their wildly successful strategy is pure sales volume, zero service. Rod and Reel Repair, with a square of carpet inside the front door that will accommodate up to four patrons and the rest of the place given over to a workbench and old file cabinets holding a universe of parts, is their opposite.